SCHOOLS —
ABORIGINAL STUDENTS — ATTENDANCE
1156. Hon ROBIN SCOTT to the Minister for Education and
Training:
Publicly
available data shows that there is little to no improvement in the school
attendance rate of Aboriginal students in WA schools. Can the minister
explain the government's failure to improve the school attendance rates
of Aboriginal students?
Hon SUE
ELLERY replied:
I thank the member for the
question.
If
the member would like to be briefed on the initiatives we are putting in place,
particularly in the Kimberley, but also
in a number of our remote schools, to address the longstanding and difficult
issue of school attendance, particularly of Indigenous kids, I would be happy
to provide him with that briefing. I will give him an example. Out of something
as terrible as the coroner's report into suicides some amazing work has
been done in Halls Creek. It is a fantastic initiative that effectively created
a case management approach to identify the real reasons that those kids were
not attending school and working with families to get them to attend. In addition
to that, the Kimberley schools project was started under the previous
government, which we have continued. It specifically tries to address issues of
literacy and numeracy, but as a consequence of that, it is also having a really
positive impact on attendance. To use the vernacular, these are wicked problems and they will not be resolved
overnight, but there are some really good examples of where school communities are tackling those
issues head-on, and I am happy to brief the member on those matters.